The present invention relates to a system for assembling a wall and, more particularly, to a system for assembling a wall including at least first and second panels.
Acoustically absorptive panels are widely used for noise control in environments such as data centers, factories, cafeterias and other spaces. In some applications, such acoustical panels are attached directly to walls or suspended from the ceiling to help absorb sound that is generally being reflected around the room or environment. In other applications, relatively large (e.g., 3′×5′ or 4′×6′) acoustical panels are “chained together” to form a partition or wall to help block and absorb sound coming from specific noise sources or specific directions. For instance, a simple pair of acoustical panels may be abutted together at an arbitrary angle to partially block and absorb the sound from a particular noise source or to block off a noise passageway. As another example, more than two panels may be abutted together in a chain to form a more complicated partition that can partially or fully surround a noise source or noisy area. Alternatively, partitions of multiple panels arranged at various angles may form partial or full enclosures to create a “quiet area,” such as an employee work station.
Current solutions for panel attachments have several drawbacks. Often, the panels themselves require frames around them and then a complicated set of hardware to interconnect one frame to another. Furthermore, most of the available systems can connect the panels in either a straight line (180 degrees) or a 90-degree angle (i.e., to form straight walls or rectangular enclosures). Connecting two panels together to form, say, a 35-degree angle to be used as a “gap filler” between two computer racks in a data center cannot be done with available systems. Furthermore, due to the requirement of a frame around the acoustical panel, the current systems cannot avail themselves of inexpensive off-the-shelf acoustical panels that are sold without any frame. Indeed, such unframed panels cannot be chained together using any of the available solutions.